Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Civilization is what is born when the soul does not surrender to its congenital vulgarity.

Die Fanatiker der Freiheit enden als Theoretiker der Polizei. Die Doktrin Fichtes zum Beispiel gipfelt in einer Theorie des Reisepasses.

The technification of the world blunts one's sensibility and does not refine one's senses.

Die moderne Literatur: dieses kolossale reaktionäre Unterfangen.

Modern man deafens himself with music in order not to hear himself.

Man has as much of a soul as he believes he has. When that belief dies, man becomes an object.

Eradication of the Best' - we can hardly find a better explanation for decline.

Modern literature: this colossal reactionary enterprise.

Someone who has been defeated should not console himself with the possible retaliations of history, but with the patent excellence of his cause.

Nothing upsets the unbeliever as much as defenses of Christianity based on intellectual skepticism and internal experience.

The historical importance of a man rarely corresponds to his intimate nature. History is full of victorious morons.

Racionalismo es el seudónimo oficial del Gnosticismo.

Die marxistische Soziologie ist die aristotelische Physik der Sozialwissenschaften.

Thinking corrupts the imbecile.

Aufklärung es la traducción circunspecta de Gnosis.

The fact that nothing in this world fulfills us does not prevent us from longing for a world that is less ignoble and less ugly. In a well-tended garden the soul observes with nobler tranquility the initial onslaught of winter.

The West withers every non-Western soul that touches it.

Die Götter strafen, indem sie die Dinge ihrer Bedeutung berauben.

Vulgarity consists as much in disrespecting what deserves respect as in respecting what does not deserve it.

Love is a transformation of the Erotic field, which occurs when there is an imbalance between its polarity... between the equal, we only copulate.

Capitalism is the monstrous distortion of private property by liberal democracy.

Even between fanatical egalitarians, the briefest encounter reestablishes human inequalities.

Love is a transformation of the Erotic field, which occurs when there is an imbalance between its polarity... between equals, we only copulate.

What is threatening about a technological device is that it can be used by someone who lacks the intellectual capacity of the man who invented it.